A Fine Dusting Of Chalk
by Honeybeemeadows
Summary: The continued adventures of Chalkward. Randoms, outtakes and extras.
1. Shivers

Beta free - all mistakes are mine.

**Shivers**

* * *

The video is complete shit.

And I can say that because I took it.

Grainy in quality and shaking erratically from my unsteady hands. It sparks to life in a flash of blinding white, dark shadows morphing slowly into jagged trees and jutting rocks. The heaping piles of snow keep the automatic focus busy and when his face finally graces the camera, he's a blurred mess of color.

Pink cheeks and green eyes, tousled penny hair and a smile as bright as the snow.

The last image of him, untainted.

"Say hello, Edward." My voice, disembodied and sounding girlishly happy tugs his smile into the corner of his mouth.

"Hello Bella," he says seriously and I remember how proud I was that I figured out the zoom button just then, panning out to film him amidst a heap of gear, suited up for the snow and strapping scary looking teeth onto his boots.

"Tell me what you're doing." Me again, voice high pitched from the cold, I think.

"These are crampons." He lifts his leg into the air, sliver teeth flashing in the light. "You need a little more than a crash pad and some chalk to climb ice."

A yell echoes over the speakers and Edward looks up, a wild flash of camera pulling away to scan the top of a monumental waterfall caught frozen and eerily still, dripping columns of pearly blue ice to the frozen stream below. Alice is waving from the top, her hand slicing the air in sparkled mittens and her face framed in the furry halo of her hat. I'd only managed to talk her out of the sparkle-studded vest by giving her my furry knee high boots, but she'd insisted on the frilly scarf and sparkly tights.

Alice had walked to the top of the waterfall with Jasper, the curving road that winds up Box Canyon crossing a bridge just above the towering deluge of frozen water. The camera catches them kissing solidly before Jasper trots back down to join us at the base. A short walk from the bridge was the touristy stop at the Falls, crowded with fat furry chipmunks overfed by the 50 cent bags of sunflower seeds for sale inside the visitor's center. It would be easy enough to find her when this was all over.

To say that Alice had a weak spot for anything small and fuzzy would not do justice to her addiction.

"Are you two sure about this?" My voice asks, the camera bouncing between the boys in a dizzying flip-flop before wandering aimlessly off Jasper's face and into the trees. I'm sure I was peering up at the looming wall of ice, forgetting the video. It was rather pretty, in an ominously silent sort of way. Soft sea foam green amidst the blue, shadows casting lilac purple through all of it that reminded me of staring into a Monet painting. The water seemed caught in mid tumble, enormous icicles easily the size of tree trunks pouring over the top and tapering into delicate points that belied their origins.

I was repeating a mantra in my head at that point, trying to reassure myself.

_It's pretty here, and everything will be ok._

But I was scared. You can hear it in my voice.

"There are fixed anchors the whole way up and I'm on belay, he's got nothing to worry about and neither do you." Jasper gloats into the camera in that way he perfected, just sexy enough to forgive him for being a cocky bastard with a crooked smirk and bright eyes. In the two years we've been climbing together, he still treats me like a gumby. Jasper reaches toward the camera and there's another mad shuffle of light and dark, the screen chaotic, my squeals and then some water on the lens.

Needless to say, he put enough snow down my hood to build an army of snowmen.

"Do not forget that I'm forever connected to your girlfriend. I know where you sleep." I thought I sounded scary at the time, but hearing your voice recorded is a mind trip at the best of times and I really only sound like a two year old marking her meager territory.

Jasper smiles at me around the tip of my finger, using a tissue to wipe off the screen.

"I could say the _exact_ same thing to you." He leans in to give the cleaned camera wink before smirking off in the other direction and yelling toward Edward. "You ready for this or what, Doll Face?"

His voice echoes off the ice, catapulting through the icicles in a fading rhyme. It's hard to tell, the camera only just gets there in time, but Edward is flipping Jasper off when the lens eventually lands on him standing beneath the falls. He is firmly strapped into a harness and pink-cheeked with excitement. He drops his scary looking ice axes into the snow at his feet and holds his arms out to his sides.

"Come give me a kiss, sweet girl," he calls, his breath frozen in the air and the camera falls, going dark and muffled. It doesn't capture our last kiss, my slip-slide across the ice and snow toward him, or how he lofted me right off my feet to put his mouth hot and wet on mine. Doesn't catch him setting me down and landing a solid thump on my ass with his gloved hand, telling me to stand clear with that stern look on his face he only gets with me.

There is exactly four minutes and twelve seconds of off-air, radio silence.

Because I tossed the camera into the safety of my open bag, abandoning film for the sake of a kiss.

I pranced back over to our gear after our kiss and plucked the camera from its spot, the film getting the only glimpse of my face that it would, a split-second smile cut off at the edges. I look cold and anxious, hair dark and wild around my face and eyes dark. I let Jasper take the camera on a visual tour of Edward's planned route, his finger pointing out the carabiners drilled into the ice. I had put up a fight over this until Edward showed me one of the bolts that was used to hold the carabiners to the ice and sure enough, the thing was a little more than half the length of my forearm.

I tried to breath easier, still repeating my mantra, listening to Jasper's voice, but you can tell that it isn't working.

The video is trembling.

"What's it called? The route?" I ask and pan back to Jasper's face, his cheeks stained pink with cold and his grey wool hat pushing his curls into his eyes.

"Shivers." He smiles at me and tugs hard on the rope that attaches him to Edward.

The camera watches in silence as Edward slowly begins his ascent up the towering wall of ice, viciously planting the sharpened blades of his axes and the steely teeth on his boots into the floe of frozen water. I was used to the smooth movements of rock climbing, untainted by gear, skin to stone in dancing patterns that often faltered and ended abruptly, but sometimes fulfilled themselves in smooth, graceful patterns. This was a completely different world, set away from the heat and sun, pressed right up against the bitter cold. Each movement was a measured amount of time spent hacking at the ice, kicking it solidly to sink the teeth of the crampons or the blades of the axes deep enough to trust. Tiny flecks of ice sheared away with each blow and Edward was breathing hard enough that you could hear him echoing softly through the speakers.

"He looks angry." You can hear my whisper, but only barely.

"It only seems that way." Jasper chuckles lowly and the next twelve minutes and thirty seven seconds are a silent homage to Edward's impressive ability, climbing steadily toward the top of the frozen waterfall, maneuvering between icicles and clipping himself firmly to each carabiner as he edges toward the top.

A delicate dance up the ice that seems to go on forever.

Twelve minutes and thirty seven seconds of forever.

And then it all goes to shit.

A sharp crack rips through the sound system, the speakers screaming through the sound as the camera whips to Jasper for a split second. His eyes meet the screen, lips gone pale and he mouths something that is lost amid the chaos.

The roaring crash of ice colliding with ice, splintering chandeliers of frozen water, rips through the incapable microphone of the video camera. The screen captures a tumultuous shower of pearly blue glass shattering in a millions directions when it hits the snow below. The sound echoes angrily up the canyon, rumbling aftershocks that set the remaining icicles singing, humming softly as they vibrate against one another in a nearly silent song. The camera fumbles wildly to focus on something, anything, and when it does, it's Alice at the top of the waterfall.

Screaming.

The view slides from Alice down the lip of the waterfall, panning across the ice in agonizingly slow precision, searching blindly. My breathing runs raggedly in the background, beginning to break into sobs and Jasper's far off yelling pierces the deceptive calm that settled around us. The camera keeps searching, struggling to focus on the pastel shades of ice until it finally focuses on him.

Edward, hanging limp from his rope, head thrown back and arms splayed like wings, ice picks tumbling to the base of the waterfall and clattering into the wreckage below.

A single drop of blood splatters the screen.

**PAUSE**

I stab the button with its two upright lines repeatedly and with all my strength until technology finally catches up to my fear and the image stills, sound gone unless you counted my frantic heartbeat and in that case, it wasn't quiet at all. I pant into my chest, gripping the edge of the couch to keep myself upright.

Hands down, worst moment of my life, caught on tape.

"Why in the world are you watching that?" Edward's stubble scrapes my shoulder and I can feel the tension radiate through him as he stares at the screen. I have no explanation for my sudden urge to watch the video again, no justifiable cause as to why I fired up our rarely used television set. It was morbid fascination and I knew he hated it, but it also remind me of what I'd almost lost.

A refresher course in fear wouldn't go unwanted in the near future.

"You scared the fuck out of me that day." I whisper my only line of defense and feel more than see his resolve falter. He slumps against me and presses his mouth to my shoulder, dragging out his kiss before he speaks.

"I scared the fuck out of myself. If you had told me that morning, you know . . . I wouldn't have gone."

That's when I turn to look at him, unable to help that my eyes land on the remnants of the video, which still held in awful suspense before us. I put my hand on his cheek and let my thumb trace the ragged scar that dances a delicate path along his cheek bone, just below his eye. It edges close enough that we thought for sure that he was going to loose it all together, a slice torn through him by falling ice. The skin of the scar is still papery thin, pink and fragile even though it's been almost two years. It lends his face a rakish air, rugged and unforgiving and maybe even a little intimidating.

Somehow, it only adds to his sex appeal. Don't ask me. The man is talented in more ways than one.

"It wouldn't have stopped you." I shake my head at him because it wouldn't have.

"How can you say that? Of course it would have." He glances into my lap and his face softens. "Though, getting the news when I drugged up beyond belief in a hospital bed about to go into surgery was quite memorable."

"He's just as bad as you, you know? I caught him trying to launch himself off the fourth step today." I smirk at Edward and that scar, remembering the weight of a heavy one year old landing in my arms, the tiny person in question sprawled fast asleep in my lap, undisturbed by the video or our conversation. He's a dead ringer for his father, and just as reckless. Edward cups a giant hand around the tiny sleeping head, curls though his fingers and nods in tempered appreciation.

"The _fourth_ step, huh? Last week it was the second. Seems we've got a prodigy on our hands."

* * *

**AN:** This video exists. I own it. I filmed it. And yes, I screamed through the entire horrific ordeal. No shit.

Consider this the first in a random selection of material that didn't make it into **Chalk** or **Mind The Gap. **I promise nothing, under no time frame, but there are one or two more quickies that might see the light of day around here.

**Route Name:** Britt Daniel (our favorite boy from Spoon) has a brand new band (*squee*) and it's _gold_. Shivers is a song on the new album by the Divine Fits, a cover of a Nick Cave song and the perfect mix of heartbreaking and angry (which is the best kind of mix there is.)

**Also** - I've been nominated for **Best New Author** in the **Emerging Swan Awards**. Check it out and clickyclicky on my name. XO - HBM


	2. Imitosis

Beta free - all mistakes are mine.

**Imitosis**

* * *

Jasper drug me clear across the meadow to the Passion Pit, but I just didn't have the head for it, bricked out on a new fantasy. Sparkles had only been gone for sixteen minutes and I was still thinking about her.

Legs, and hands, and that wide-eyed look she got when I caught her blushing about something.

Thinking about how she had a real name, something just as pretty as what I called her in my head and how her eyes flashed frustration with every peel off her rock. She was _so_ close, nothing a week or two of climbing wouldn't fix and I fully expected her to top it by the end of the month.

Which was good, because I also intended to kiss her at the top of that rock when she finally got there, and it gave me a good two weeks to work up my courage.

"Dude, are you even watching me?"

I shook Sparkles free and glanced up at Jasper who was hanging from his fingertips, leg wrapped around a lip of rock nearly two feet above my head, a long way from his crash pad. With his hair wild and a scowl on his mouth, he hung his feet and dangled for a moment before landing delicately on the pad. When he wiped his hands agitatedly on his shorts, he sent a puff of white off into the air.

"How did you even do it?" He grumbled.

"Do what?"

"Find a girl like _that,_ out _here_?" He waved an arm at the forest and I glanced around, wondering what the fuck he was getting at and trying desperately not to think about the girl he was obviously referring to.

_Poker face._

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Victoria? Tanya? _Jane?_" He shot back at me in quick succession and _yeah_, so he had a point. One had a neck the size of my thigh, another climbed like she was having some sort of neurological fit and the other was just plain annoying, in no particular order. He didn't mention Maria, which I knew meant he was still feeling burned and edgy. Some girls just weren't cut out to be gabbys, but Jasper fell hard and landed even harder.

I'd like to think that he was worried for me, but I knew he was probably jealous.

"I don't know. I swear I thought she was a hallucination at first."

Jasper stared hard at me for a moment before throwing up his hands and sitting on the crash pad to tug off his shoes. "You're useless. You've got that glazed over look you always get," he grumbled. "Usually it's over a rock but now there's this . . . this . . . girl."

_Yes, she is a girl. And yes, he's totally jealous._

* * *

When we made it back to the car Jasper plopped into the passengers seat and picked my newly purchased plastic bag of chalk up off the floor, rolling it around between his hands as I drove. I preferred my chalk in loose form while Jasper was a block man. I still didn't understand why, watching him meticulously crumble bars of chalk into his bag but it seemed to have become part of his ritual, much like the absent-staring thing he always did. Which he was doing again, right now.

The silence was deafening.

"I just fucking met the girl. She's gonna kill herself out there if I don't do something."

"I dunno . . ." Jasper fondled the chalk bag thoughtfully, all three pounds of it. "You've never left handprints on _my_ ass."

"Do you _want_ me to?"

"Not particularly," he snapped at me. "But I don't want to loose another climbing partner to some girl."

He was talking about Rose and the disappearing act Emmett had been pulling for the last two weeks. I couldn't blame him, even I was getting a little pissed.

"I'm not gonna bail on you."

"You say that _now_." More grumbling and the plastic crinkled beneath his fingers, agitated chalk tumbling around inside. He seemed to be staring far off into the future while I had barely made it past her mouth.

"I'm not _marrying_ the girl, I'm just showing her the ropes."

The chalk bag exploded.

Fragile plastic torn through by the pressure between his palms. In an instant the entire car was engulfed in a suffocating cloud of powdery white, coating my mouth and stinging my eyes. I slammed on the brakes, sliding to halt in the middle of the winding dirt road that would eventually get us back to the highway, coughing as I tumbled out of the car. The breeze pulled most of the chalk cloud away and left me coated from head to toe in snowy white. The interior of the car wasn't much better, the grey leather gone all sorts of snow-globe. Jasper looked freshly tarred and feathered.

"What the fuck, J? That was supposed to get me through the summer."

I whined, no lie. Chalk isn't cheap.

* * *

Hope they don't get pulled over on the way home ;)

**Swell1** gave me the idea for this, so credit must be bestowed where credit is due.

Chapter was originally cut due to funky flow, posted without much revision.

**Imitosis** is a song by Andrew Bird. Beautiful on record, lovelier in person, he is a gift to the world of music.


	3. Sunlight

Beta free - all mistakes are mine

**Sunlight**

* * *

"These are easily the ugliest thing I've ever, _ever_ worn." Alice hoisted her foot into the air, crammed into a new pink climbing shoe. I'd bought her a flowered chalk bag to match, hoping the colors would take her mind off the logistics, but she was too savvy for me.

"Yes, but you wanted to do this for Jasper, remember?"

"Remind me why?" She eyed the shoe skeptically, her mouth twisted.

"His hair. His ass. His eyes." I ticked off the only three things she'd talked about in constant, detailed rotation for the last three weeks. After he took her to the fire tower and kissed her on that towering, cloud-bound porch, she was a goner.

"Will you tell him, for the record?"

"Yes, Alice. I will be sure to tell him that those are the ugliest thing you have ever, _ever_ worn."

* * *

"Does she always dress like that?" Edward whispered from behind me, ducking low to put his mouth near my ear. I tried to temper my smile in case she looked back and caught me.

She was actually dressed down today, but it took me nearly an hour to explain to her why she couldn't climb in a skirt. I rarely climbed in a _shirt_ these days, preferring to strip down to shorts and my sports bra lest anything get snagged on the rock and I had visions of her dangling from her frilly tutu, a good six feet off the ground. She eventually relented and settled for Lycra shorts and a pale pink tank top with a wispy ruffled hem that fell low around her waist. She was sporting a headband with a giant purple flower on it and had enough glitter on her face to attract attention from space.

"This is subdued for her, I promise."

"I like your outfit better." He traced his fingertips along the skin where my spine met my shorts, surely leaving a telltale streak of white behind and I hated on my skin for betraying me with pebbled goosebumps. I came home from our climbs covered in the patterned fans of his fingerprints, splayed fingers sprouting from smudged palms all over my exposed skin.

"_Lack_ of." I corrected him slyly and he nodded without hesitation.

"Am I that transparent?"

"Like glass."

* * *

She didn't make it to the top, but she didn't get hung up on her frilly tank top either, which surprised me more than if she _had_ topped the rock. I watched her with some amount of fascination, impressed with her determination and amazed beyond all belief that she wasn't completely preoccupied with the damage done to her hands. She was giddy and giggly the whole drive home, dabbing at her bleeding spots and glowing with pride. When the boys dropped us off at home I watched Jasper drag her out of the backseat and fold her up in his arms like a gift, their faces nuzzled together in silent conversation.

"Hey, you gonna send me home with a kiss, or what?" Edward looped an arm around my waist and pulled me up against him. He'd gotten a little sunburned today, his skin flushed and flaming hot enough to make my head spin.

"You don't have to go home."

"I do. Jasper and I are going to climb Sunlight tomorrow. I need to sleep and I'm not going to get any of that with you."

"Is that a new problem of yours? Sunlight?"

"No," Edward chuckled, mouth suspended to the side as if he was amused. "It's a mountain."

"A big one?"

"Yes. Fourteen fifty-nine, I think."

"And that means . . ."

His mouth softened right along with his eyes and he put both hands to my face to kiss me, something soft and sweet and pure compared to our recent carpet excursions, with a hint of déjà vu. I steadied myself against him and let him run his tongue along my lower lip.

"Elevation," he whispered, lips to mine. "Fourteen thousand feet."

"That sounds dangerous," I choked, fear still freshly scarred by falling rocks.

"Not as dangerous as you." He glanced over at Jasper and Alice, giggling and fondling each other like love-sick teenagers. They'd barely been together for more than what amounted to a day or two and there they were, right along side us.

"Then why did it take so long?" I stood on tiptoe to reach his mouth and kissed him again, in case he needed explanation.

"You threw me for a loop, silly girl. I was gonna kiss you on top of the Problem Queen, you know? But you topped it in three _days_ instead of three weeks and my whole plan went to shit."

* * *

**AN:** The view from the top of Sunlight Peak can be seen at 14ers (ff doesn't like links) com

It is one of my favorite places in the whole entire world.

**The Emerging Swan Awards** are open for voting - and I'm a potential for the win. Go check out the sight and give me a boost, yeah?


End file.
